Serum

-Thirty-Two-

Daniel, Tara and Tod were sitting anxiously together on a pew, all staring at Lana. She was examining them all carefully, Daniel still looked a little pale, a fact that Lana didn’t seem to miss.

“What happened to this one?” Lana turned on us, finger pointed at Daniel

“He suffered from exhaustion and collapsed from hunger on us. But we got him fed quickly enough, he’s doing fine now.” Conner answered, voice low, almost a growl. Lana pulled more expired blood out from under her clothing and tossed the packets at us, tossing a few towards the three on the pew as well.

“You’re going to want to get those refrigerated soon.” She remarked pointedly as the young ones tore into theirs, but none so greedily as Daniel. Conner scooped up all the packets in his arms, handing me a few, and slyly grabbing the front of my shirt in the process. He pulled me towards the kitchen, still trying to keep me away from Lana.

“What are you doing? Let me go!” I hissed at him.

“Look, I thought you were safe before, since she’d changed you and all that, but now I can’t be sure, especially after…” He began in an undertone, but Lana cleared her throat behind us. It was obvious her reason for telling us to get the packets in the refrigerator was so that we could be out of hearing range of Tara, Tod and Daniel.

“I just thought that you two might like to know what’s been going on. I don’t want to upset the young ones.” Lana said, gesturing back through the door.

“Well? Have you caught them yet?” Conner demanded, on guard.

“No. Unfortunately, because we don’t have their scent or anything other than Daniel’s vague description, they’re a bit harder to find than we thought. We re-traced Daniel’s path via his scent, but there’s been so much human activity there over the last twenty-four hours that we can’t be sure which trails lead to the right humans. Besides, the scents are so befuddled it’s almost impossible to separate one smell from the other.” Lana informed us, with a slight wrinkling of her nose at the last part. “It’s not been fun, let me tell you that.” She declared. “We’re hoping that the humans will be out looking for Daniel in the next couple of days so that we can catch them, but I’m not too hopeful. I’ll keep bringing you blood until we do, or deem it safe for the three young ones to be out hunting again. You two, are of course welcome to hunt, as long as you stay in the immediate area and only go one at a time. I trust that you are both capable of restraining yourselves. Otherwise, I’ll try to keep you well stocked so that you don’t have to. Unless, of course, you decide to have any more accidents with the young ones that we’ll need to be worried about.” Lana’s tone turned snide.

“Thanks for your overconfidence in us.” Conner uttered between his teeth. I could tell by his expression that he was getting angry again. I touched his arm, his anger was bordering on attack. Urgently I started thinking calming thoughts, trying to get him to understand. Conner blinked, darting a quick glance at me, but I felt his emotions simmer down a bit. Lana merely smirked at me again, this time I felt like attacking.

“Lana, now that you’ve given us the information, I think it’s time you leave. I don’t think we want anything…uncomfortable…to happen.” I stated in a low voice, keeping my emotions in check. Lana’s gaze bounced to Conner and then back to me.

“How’s your wrist?” She asked. Conner growled and lunged, and I barely got enough of a grip on his arm to keep him from attacking her. There was a slight tick in the muscles beside Lana’s mouth. It would probably have been missed by most people but I saw it. I think Conner actually scared her. She inhaled deeply, then shot another sharp look at me. “Have you.. gone into rut over the girl?” Lana hissed. Conner froze, turning terrified eyes to me briefly before shooting an arm out and pushing me back a step.

“Well that’s just great, Conner. You picked a fine time for it. Here the world is falling down around your ears and you choose now to indulge your hormones, after how many years of ignoring them? Tell me you have at least had intercourse and started trying to get it out of your system!?” Lana threw her arms in the air and then crossed them over her breasts, glaring at her brother. My jaw had come loose, I was certain. I couldn’t find a way to get my mouth closed again.

“Rut?” I squeaked. “Intercourse?” My voice rose and Conner glanced at me over his shoulder apologetically.

“You haven’t!” Lana accused, nearly shouting, pointing her finger. She spun on a heel and started pacing the kitchen, mumbling to herself.

“Conner..” I yanked his arm, trying to get his attention, but a low growl still tumbled from him every time Lana got too close.

“..not that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing if she could breed, but not this quickly.. And definitely not to you. Perfectly good genetics and Serum gone to waste.” Lana shot a hateful look at Conner. “I haven’t even had time to run the tissue sample through the tests.. I wanted to do slices and ooh!” Another harsh glare shot Conner’s way, which got worse as Conner’s growl kicked up at the mention of ‘tissue sample’. “Ok, ok, we can still salvage this situation.” Lana came to a halt in front of us.

“You two-” She pointed at us as if we weren’t smart enough to realize who she referred to. I bared my fangs at her. “I advise that you burn this Rut out of Conner’s system as soon as possible. s*x. Frequently. As often as possible. I need your attention on the kids and that’s not going to happen if you’re distracted by your hormones. As long as there’s no other complicating factor, Adrian should still be able to find another partner later down the road. No reason to think she’ll get stuck Bonding to Conner. Right. Good.” Lana had begun pacing again, but my gaze was bouncing back and forth between them.

“We’ve already shared memories Lana.” Conner ground out. Lana spun in place to face us again with a wordless shriek.

“You what?! Is that what spurred on your rut? I can’t believe this! Why would you do this to me? You’re so selfish! You greedy little brat!” Lana flung herself at Conner, nails and teeth bared, but I noticed before she did that we had an audience.

“Daniel, Tara, Tod. Did you need something?” I spoke up. Lana came to a sudden stop almost as quickly as she started moving. She straightened, smoothing her hands over her clothes and hair, then pointed a finger at us.

“Work through it.” She snarled, then shoved past the vampire youth to get out of the kitchen. I nearly collapsed.